[Typo3-dev] Typo3 as Flash CMS

[Johannes Reichardt]

Well would be interesting what you want to achieve - what sort of site 
do you want to make?

- Johannes

>Hi all,
>I wish to discuss some architectural issues involved
>with using typo3 as a CMS for flash. Im doing this from
>the point of view of a flash coder, but I know there is alot
>of interest in this development out there, and I hope we can
>get a discussion going.
>
>Sorry if it is a long email.
>
>There are at least 3 ways of mixing/matching flash and html.
>1. put swfs in any html page as a content type but the menu control
>is still a classic typo3 html menu
>2. let flash be the menu controller utilising the xml output by
>one of the menu xml extentions (I have had most success with Benjamins
>and Ingmars great efforts), but load the content into either another normal
>frame or into the top frame.
>3. let flash take over the full window, and all content be loaded into
>a movieclip container, ie. the main.swf will serve as the top frame
>in a frameset. This technique might be the least considered from the
>point of view of classical backend coders, and it was started (for better
>or worse) by the classic www.2advanced.com site.
>
>There is already support for the first 2 approaches, using for instance
>Ingmars
>extension (and adding some support for more content types), but it is the
>3rd
>approach I will focus on.
>
>If you install and configure the following extensions
>1. XML for Flash (bf_xml_for_flash)
>2. XML contentrendering (xml_contentrendering)
>3. XML Menu (ingmar_xmlmenu)
>
>You will be able to get some xml like
><bf_xml_for_flash>
> <menu>
><section level="1" label="Home" name="6" link="index.php?id=6"
>target="bf_xml_for_flash"  type="444" >
><subsection level="2" label="News" name="20" link="index.php?id=20"
>target="bf_xml_for_flash"  type="444" />
></menu>
><tt_content uid="4">
>  <header><![CDATA[Welcome to FC Bigfeets homepage]]></header>
>  <bodytext><![CDATA[Et in ...]]></bodytext>
> </tt_content>
></bf_xml_for_flash>
>
>That is a good start. But one soon realizes there are some info missing.
>There is obviously the issue with other content types that needs to be added
>to the xml (it is after all just an experimental extension still, good one
>at that).
>But there is also the issue about what part of flash should handle the
>content data.
>Normally, typo3 has all sorts of ways of rendering html content, via TS, or
>TV
>or what have you, and normal XML can also be rendered via an XSL stylesheet,
>ie we have a display layer that knows what to expect and how to render that.
>
>A general setup in flash could be, a main.swf that gets told somehow from
>where
>it should load the menu xml data (either via variables hardcoded in the swf
>or
>better yet via variables passed in through the embedding html), a set of
>resource
>files (such as graphical assets that needs to be preloaded), a display layer
>and
>various content. What I mean here by display layer is an xml literate swf
>that can
>interpret the loaded data, and in its turn load the content, be it text,
>images, mp3 or
>other swfs.
>
>The menu xml data above is missing info about what swf or movieclip in flash
>is supposed
>to handle the content xml.
>
>What I have decided to do is to separate out the menu rendering typeNum from
>the
>content rendering typeNum, so when I go index.php?id=home&type=444 I get
>only
>the menu xml, and when I go index.php?id=home&type=555 I get only the
>content xml
>of that page (including multimedia and images). Next Im trying to divide
>what goes where (
>after all a menu can be a content on a page also) and what info should be
>where. This
>is where I wish wise CMS builders like you lot could throw a helping hint.
>Im thinking
>that the menu xml needs to contain 3 things, a) descriptions (like title,
>thumbnail and maybe
>an abstract - which is available in an advanced menu), b) the link to where
>the content
>xml can be loaded from and c) the display layer that should handle it, ie in
>this case probably a
>swf file.
>
>With that logic the main.swf can load and render a menu tree, and when you
>click
>on some option it would both load the display handler (an swf) and the xml
>data
>into that handler. All that remains then is to have the display handlers and
>the data
>correspond to eachother - but that is the same for all content types in
>typo3.
>
>First question...is this good logic?
>
>Second..if it is, where should the display swfs be stored? Im thinking they
>are
>really page templates for flash and they could be stored (and be made
>accesible quite
>easily in xml) in the file list of an advanced page header. Only trouble is,
>swfs arent
>allowed file types there.
>
>Where else could one store them? One could put the display swf as the first
>content element in a page and simply assume that the first element will know
>what
>to do with the rest. Not so nice but it could work.
>
>Else? One could maybe have another tree which corresponds to
>the content pages, but which only contained these swfs that serve
>as templates for displaying the content xml. I have no idea of how one
>would do that, but it might be possible? (Like separating display templates
>from data templates)
>
>Is there any other development on xml content rendering going on out there?
>Any other thoughts please.
>
>Is xmlrpc an option? Have no experience with that.
>
>Has anyone experimented with flash remoting and typo3
>(http://www.amfphp.org/)?
>I haven't but I guess that using that one could do away with the xml layer
>between flash and a cms
>altogether. Does anyone know what functions could be made available that
>way?
>Is it a feasible approach?
>
>Best regards
>/Borg
>
>elevated.to
>
>
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